Senate assures: No reenacted 2020 budget

The 2020 General Appropriations Act (GAA) won’t go the way of the 2019 version as the Senate sees the approval of the P4.1-trillion fiscal budget by November.

Once the House of Representatives version is transmitted to the Upper House this week, the Senate can deliberate on the national budget after the 5 October to 4 November break.

“Maybe by the second week of November, we can proceed with the interpellation period,” said Senate Vicente Sotto III in a radio interview. “Then give it two to three weeks, the maximum period can be three weeks, by last week of November, we can pass it on second and third reading as it is certified as urgent.”

He explained that the delay on the approval of the 2019 GAA, which was signed last April, was due to the late submission of the House version.

Sotto recalled that the House version of the budget reached them on 24 November 2019 and the Senate deliberation completed during the latter part of December.

To recall, the 2019 expenditure plan’s approval was derailed after the House of Representatives and Senate did not find common ground on the realignment of the P75 billion worth of public works projects .

It forced President Rodrigo Duterte to veto the P95 billion in the final 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA) as he said he will not “tolerate corruption.”

Sotto also explained that allocation for congressional districts cannot be called “pork barrel” if it came from the bottom-up budgeting or if it is included in the National Expenditures Program as submitted by the Executive Department.

“If you shuffled it and you modified then you turned it into a lump sum and you have put it in random places, then that could be called pork,” Sotto said.

Sotto also assured that a reenacted budget will not happen, unlike the first few months of 2019.

Finance Committee chair Sen. Sonny Angara said that they are “on track” in passing the budget by yearend.

“Before we (take our) break, I’d ask the vice-chairs to finish their hearings and to submit their reports to incorporate (the final) committee report. So, we are on track for passage this year,” Angara said.